Jeanne-Marie sat silently going over it all in her mind. “Té,” she murmured, “how quickly they all go; the father, the mother, old Dubois, even Jeanne the _voisine_, is gone. I alone am left, and the good God knows if there will be any to cry for me when my turn comes to go.” She shut the old Mass-book, and put it carefully back on the shelf, and she went to the old looking-glass and the tanned wrinkled face met its reflection very calmly and patiently. “I think it was the hard work in the fields when I was young,” she said; “certainly Marthe was right. It is the face of an old woman, a face more worn than hers, though she is beyond forty and has borne so many children.” IV Firman had urged his sister to stay on at the _métairie_ after his marriage. “You should not go, it is not natural,” he said one evening a few weeks before his wedding, while they were piling the small wood in the shed. “The old house will not be the old house without you. Suzanne wishes it also. _Parbleu!_ Is it the custom for the fathers to turn their sons out, when they marry? Then, why should I let the old sister go, now my time for marrying has come? Suzanne is a good girl and pretty; and has never even looked at any young fellow in the village--for I, as you know, am particular, and I like not the manners in some villages, where a girl’s modesty is counted nothing--but blood is worth the most, _ma foi_, as the old father used to say; and badly must he think of me to see the old sister making room even for the little Suzanne.” But Jeanne-Marie shook her head. “I cannot well explain it, Firman,” she said. “It’s not that your Suzanne comes unwelcome to me--no, the good God knows it’s not that--but it would be so strange. I should see the old mother’s shadow, at the table where you sat, and in the bed where you lay. I might get foolish, and angry, Firman. So let me go, and, when the little ones come, I shall be their grandmother, and Suzanne will forgive me.”